Could the Scottish Parliament Stop the UK from Leaving the EU?

Oh, by the way, "The referendum was non-binding, it's advisory".

It's as big as a constitutional change and such change usually require more than 50% to be adopted.

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Some people voted leave for less immigration, others for more balanced (non EU-biased) immigration, it seems that these goals are fundamentally at odds. This isn't the only example of polarising goals that people have expressed. Until a referendum is put forward that actually allows people to express the end result they're hoping for (leaving the EU just seems to be the first step, not the goal for most people), I strongly believe it's undemocratic to proceed under the false argument that the people have spoken.

For what it's worth, the point i'm making is the same as the argument in favour of alternative vote (or single transferable vote) vs first-past-the-post elections. The way in which people are polled is insufficient for ascertaining what they actually want. A binary choice doesn't work in a world with more than two possible opinions.

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And there's the problem.

There IS a case to be made that a democratic majority with a margin of merely 4% is something that can, in fact, be ignored. In the United States, we have these lovely Senate filibusters, for instance, which everyone loves to complain about when their party isn't the one doing them. And vetos. And Supreme Court smackdowns.

The UK has at least a couple of these it could theoretically apply (e.g. the fact that Parliament isn't bound by the results, and some long-shot ones like Scottish Parliament or the royal veto that they apparently never use) but when you put something on the ballot like that and make the entire nation vote, it kind of sends a message that this is something that's going to be respected. If there's a whole new Parliament in a few months that may be different? But substantial fallout will remain.

This may well come as a surprise to many Brexit voters. It certainly sets out his stall for what he hopes to achieve, presumably he'll happily sign up for mass immigration as long as the finance industry gets opt-outs from EU fraud investigations or whatever his backers want to get out of this. Re-invigorating northern England's former industrial heartlands is nowhere on his list, and the anger of the people who live there can in no way harm the Conservative party in the UKs current parliamentary system.

I think UKIP will sit back and let the next Conservative government fail to deliver on some key Leave promises - I think they'll be targeting the 2020 election on a "the Conservatives didn't deliver on what Leave promised but UKIP will" platform.

The next Conservative leader will probably offer Farage a peerage to try and neutralise him but I suspect he is far too clever to fall for such an obvious ploy.

That, combined with the fact that things are currently going to hell in a hand basket (look at the FTSE250, comprised of business that make most their money within the UK, as opposed to the FTSE100 which doesn't), makes the out vote at best questonable right now.

Be that as it may, I voted remain, but only beause now was not a good time to leave and nobody seemed to have a plan for exit. But I have faith in Britain - what I hope will happen is that we will accept freedom of movement, and that we will bloody well deal with it properly this time by shutting up the racists and investing in intrastructure, health and housing such that the cause of all the mess that led up to all this doesn't happen again. Fuck austerity this time - spend like there's no tomorrow, because frankly there might not be a tommorrow otherwise. Whethe that actually happens in my lifetime, I doubt, but hey oh.

At least insofar it's true that many people just voted to "send a signal" but didn't actually think they'd get a majority, that strikes me as going by the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it, so to speak.

> If this occurs we can expect politics in the UK to become dangerously divided and unsettled, and the likes of UKIP to become a seriously large party in the next parliament, not to mention civil unrest in various forms.

Hmm, sounds like a lose/lose situation: http://usuncut.com/world/hate-crimes-across-england-evoke-ni...

Admittedly, both these points are kind of anecdotal, I don't have an overview or a glass ball either. But still, I don't really get the "it might be a mistake, but you have to go through with it" stuff.

Maybe not the long grass, but it's a poison chalice for the next leader for the reasons you say - trigger article 50 and Scotland leaves UK and tries to join EU. Don't leave and the majority voters get angry. (And we really don't need them getting angrier since a small minority are angry enough to spray paint Polish community centres; to print and laminate "no more polish vermin" cards. (EDIT: Both these things have happened post-ref.)

Other way round. UK politics was already divided and unsettled, it's just that an illusion of stability and consensus has been pasted on the front. The cardboard facade has collapsed when asked to bear weight - just look at the leadership chaos!

This referendum and its result is really a result of dozens of problems which have been pushed under the rug. It's all the unexploded bombs of nasty controversies that were never properly defused, just piled up in a corner.

The "immigration" question covers lots of nasty questions, for example. What is the EU doing about refugees? Why has Sangatte festered for so long? What should the right response to radical islamist violence be? What is the economic function of towns whose businesses collapsed in the 70s and have not improved? What's going on in the "crap towns" like Great Yarmouth and Boston, Lincs.? Why are voters struggling to get GP appointments and school places?

What is the UK constitution? Don't say "unwritten", because that's not true; instead it's scattered bits and pieces from Factortame to the Good Friday Agreement. That's why we're having this discussion about Scotland blocking it - it's not clear how any of this works. Is it really a good idea that Parliament can make big constitutional changes by simple majority (e.g. Fixed Term Parliaments Act)? Why do we have so many different voting systems but use the crap one for the important election? Does the House of Lords count as "undemocratic" compared to, say, the EU commission?

What is the proper relationship of the non-English parts of the UK to the Union? Scotland regards Westminster as the distant, unaccountable elite and finds the distant, unnacountable Brussels elite more cordial. Despite the fisheries problem.

What should UK economic and employment policy be? Are we funding the current account deficit by selling houses to foreigners from kleptocratic states and China? Are we too dependent on financial services which are too centralised in London?

Was Greece treated fairly? What about Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain? What about the Polish constitutional crisis? Is Hungary run by Nazis? What if the Austrian election had gone differently?

Did you know the EU has a Trump-style border wall? It's in Bulgaria.

This twitter gives the view from Northern Ireland, which was "dangerously divided and unsettled" for years with malign neglect from the UK government: https://twitter.com/shockproofbeats

I'm sure that you, personally, have answers to all these questions. My point is that there is no broad consensus on all of them, they've nagged at the UK for years, and now they've all been made relevant.

There is no such mandate, implied or otherwise. The referendum was advisory. Legally there is nothing compelling the government to act on the result.

There's a joke going around here in London that we should devolve with them forming Scotlondon and set up immigration controls at M25 junctions. It's becoming pretty clear that a lot of exit voters never imagined it could actually happen and are suffering buyer's remorse.

EDIT:

"UK Government could use Article 48 of the Lisbon Treaty to apply for a treaty change which would allow Scotland to become a member when it formally becomes independent in 2016.

The Article 48 route has been dismissed by the UK Government and it would also require unanimous approval of all the other 28 EU members. Instead the more likely route is Article 49 which requires Scotland to apply for membership."

This is just from some light Googling, some more informed people may have more details

from http://www.scotsman.com/scottish-independence/key-topic/euro...

Scotland 'remaining' in the EU is far from a done deal, we have yet to hear whether the EU would accept it - it has no record of running its own economy to speak of.

If Spain was to block an independent Scotland's entry to the EU would they feel the need to provide an explanation? If so would they say the real reason - "we don't want to set a precedent and embolden Catalonia's bid for independence" - or would they weasel out of it somehow?

The question no one seems to have thought to answer until now, is whether Boris or any other politician has a mandate to dissolve the UK in order to do so. Does anyone believe that if the vote had been "Should England leave the UK and the EU" it would have won majority?

Except, to prevent other EU nations from leaving, brexit should be as painful as possible. Ideally with the UK falling apart.

Headline should summarize the main points in the news article as a statement, rather than posing a question to the reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

In a representative democracy, all you vote for is your representative. The rest is politics.

How would the conservatives pledge? Half of them want out and spent the last few months campaigning for it.

Many Labour areas of the country voted to leave, calling an election would just provide more confusion.

I also don't think it's a good idea to just vote in a government based on 1 aspect

It was one of the main election subjects back in May 2015 to whether to hold the referendum or not. Making whether to follow through another election subject would be wasteful considering leave has the majority.

  Then you make it an election subject: will we follow
  the referendum or not?!

I'm sure there's been some buyer's remorse among leave voters - but if remain can't win a remain-vs-leave vote, I doubt they'd fare better with a remain-labour-corbyn-vs-leave-conservative-boris vote.

I'd say 2/3, or some requirement for a certain % of the total population.

The consequences for leaving the EU were well-known and kicked in within hours of the votes being tallied last week, but didn't stop the English from voting to do it anyway. And if we're going to allow the English to be that reckless on the basis of a single simple-majority vote, I don't see why we oughtn't let the Scots do the same.

But you're going to need a new one: the euro just became a lot more credible than the pound as a currency for Scotland.

That's an extremely common fallacy. The banks were bailed out not by the countries they were based in but by the proportion of their wealth that belonged to citizens of each countries (roughly, it is slightly more complicated than that). Only a small proportion of the "Scottish Banks" wealth was actually that of Scottish citizens. The majority of it was English wealth along with a few other countries, therefore England would have had to bail out a sizeable chunk to avoid the economic ramifications of these "Scottish Banks" collapsing.

No. Sturgeon is just playing up to her base.

I suspect it's even more simple – Sturgeon thinks that Scotland should be part of the EU, is backed by a clear majority of voters, and will take all steps possible to try and keep the country in the EU.

Scotland is effectively a one party system, which is quite dangerous, never mind that the common man/woman do not see this.

Scotland currently has a parliament in which no single party has a majority. That's essentially as far from a one-party state as it's possible to get.

You might call it a one-party state in the sense of representation as Westminster, but that's down to an outdated electoral system more than anything else.

The consequences for leaving the UK are well known.

That might have been the case (though I don't think it was) but it's clear that those consequences are likely to be substantially different now. The UK that existed at the time of the last referendum will no longer exist.

Companies aren't going to stay in because of Europe. They are going to move over the border.

I'm not sure there is any evidence of that at this point. Few companies said they would do that at the time of the last referendum, so it's difficult to see why this would have changed.

Also. The UK rescued the Scottish banks. Scotland will have to take on half this debt. Will the EU bail out Scotland? Will there be Greece style terms?

The UK rescued the UK's banks – not 'Scottish banks'. These were banks that were Scottish in origin, but with most work conducted in the City of London, and which paid taxes to the UK treasury. It would be obviously preposterous to expect Scotland to bail out London-based banks, given that it does not receive the associated tax revenue.

So with the debt, companies leaving, not getting much tax receipts. How will Scotland pay for the FREE tuition, FREE healthcare, FREE this and FREE that, they like to promise? Is the EU going to be sending them FREE monies?

Your argument seems to presuppose that the Scottish economy will collapse, which seems unlikely. Maybe it will result in a tightening of budgets such that some things which are currently free at point of use will no longer be so.

Finally and this is where I tend to laugh the most. Once Scotland joins Europe and the Euro. How is Scotland an independent state in Europe? How have Scottish people not realised this? Go look at Greece!

People in Scotland are well aware of that. There is a trade-off of sovereignty for stability and economics; Scotland might be subject to EU law, but in exchange it gains access to the single market. It's possible to be both an independent state and agree to international treaties.

Oh and the UK won't let Scotland use the pound. I can tell you that now!

The UK has no say on who uses Sterling.